Parental Lessons

Children have been in my life forever, from my seven brothers and sisters to my three little kids of my own and I've discovered that I'm still very ignorant in the fine art of parenting. Here's two little stories to prove it.

BUCKWHEAT HONEY
Kayla had her 4-year-old check up and while we were there I had a quick question about Lily and a perpetual deep chest cough when she slept. He asked some questions and determined that it was probably just residual stuff from another illness. Then he suggested that we give her a teaspoon of buckwheat honey before bed. I gave him that look that said, "are you sure? I thought honey was bad for kids?" He must have read my mind because he followed up saying, "we're finding new, really cool uses for honey." He told me to get it at Target or in the health food sections of some big grocery stores. So, I picked some up, went home, and that very night gave Lily a spoonful of honey. Her little sweet tooth sucked down every last sticky drop of honey so fast that Winnie the Pooh would be jealous and that night she slept. We didn't hear anything out of her at all, whereas the past few nights she spent most of hit coughing herself awake so that she could cry back to sleep. I thought it had to be an odd coincidence that it worked, so we tried it again and we had two nights of peace, then three, and now without the honey the cough seems to be gone. So all of you parents afraid to keep pushing cough syrup down your babies throat...try Buckwheat Honey.

THE NOT SO DEAD DOG
This little tale is pretty sad, but an example of parenting at its finest. My husky Rorie started to get sick late last week and I originally thought that I had given her something from the table that didn't agree with her, but her health went downhill and I got up in the morning and found her in a seizure. I got her to the vet as soon as I could and he took some tests and determined that she was having severe renal failure and that her liver, kidneys, and pancreas were shutting down. He decided to give her some fluids and see how she was the next day. Well, that night he called and said that she wasn't doing any better and that he didn't expect her to make it through the night. I made the decision to go ahead and put her down first thing in the morning. Well, he didn't call me before church started and Jenni and I prepared the kids by telling them that Rorie had died. They reacted like children do when they loose their pet and we tried to move on. Then we got to church, my phone chirped that I had a voice mail, and it was the vet. He was calling to tell me that the dog was up and moving around and he wanted to give her a little bit longer to get better. I can't hardly believe my luck I have told my kids that the dog has died, the vet is telling me she isn't dead, and there is a very slim chance she might come home for me to explain to my kids that the doctor didn't lie about the death and that dogs don't get resurrected like Jesus. Now, Rorie is still very sick and will most likely not pull through this, she had one more test to undergo before I'll have to make another hard decision about her future. The moral of this story is to make absolutely certain that life cooperates when you are trying to teach your kids a difficult life lesson, because some things just shouldn't be retracted.

Tyler's visit

Some of you may know that my brother Tyler is getting ready to ship out to Afghanistan in April, so one night Tyler brought his dog up to the house to run around the yard with my dogs for a bit. He also hung out, ate dinner, and read a book to the kids. The funny thing was that he was reading a Star Wars book and the kids kept correcting him on the character's names. Now, for those of you that know Tyler he's always been our Star Wars guru (to be fair, Jo and I are also pretty savvy to the going ons of the far away galaxy) and he was forever correcting us on our mutual hobby. So to see a 4 and 5-year-old giving him garbage because he didn't know one of the names was more than a little humorous. And like usual we had to document this visit.

Birthday at the park

Kayla's birthday actually landed on a Saturday and it turned out to be a beautiful day so Jenni came up with the idea to take her and the other kids out to lunch and to Penguin Park. We had a blast. It is amazing what a hamburger and a little sunshine will do for the kids.

Snow Day

A couple of weeks ago we were suppose to get an inch or two of snow and the weather people were right, we got some snow...just a little more than a "dusting". Oh well, we did what any good family should do when an opportunity like this arises...WE WENT SLEDDING. So here are some photos of our fun day outside.



There was enough snow after I shoveled out my car that Jon and I made a snow fort, but as you can see it was a little too close to the fence and Jenni quickly realized that it made a good escape ramp for the dogs. I had to destroy it to keep the mutts in the yard. It was still fun.

Rory also likes to get into the snow action, you'd think she was a husky or something. All I know is that the guy in the picture looks like he isn't all there.